Having a nurse visit the home a few days after a woman has a baby reduces the number of newborns being readmitted to the hospital with jaundice or dehydration. The third or fourth day after delivery is the time when babies can get problems like jaundice and dehydration, so the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups recommend follow-up on these days. However, in reality infants are often not seen on these days. Though People have been talking about home visits by nurses as a way to improve follow-up, but few studies have looked at whether such visits improve health outcomes and whether they are cost effective. Researchers from the Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey, USA, analysed data from all babies who were born at the a particular medical centre between 2000 and 2002. Of the total, 326 received a home nurse visit and 2641 did not. The rate of hospital readmission for jaundice or dehydration in the first 10 days of life was just 0.6 percent for the nurse-visit group compared with 2.8 percent for the other group. The corresponding rates for an emergency hospital visit in the first 10 days of life were 0 and 3.5 percent. The researchers concluded that having home visits by nurses provides a bridge over the gap between nursery care and primary care.
Pediatrics,
October 2004